Can You Handle The Truth About Retirement?

Robert Laura
, ContributorOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Most people understand the importance of planning and saving for retirement; but how well does that knowledge and effort translate into everyday life in retirement? The realities that can come with retirement don’t always get portrayed in 30 second commercials or explained by a financial professional. In fact, the popular movie line made famous by Jack Nicholson in the film A Few Good Men can also apply to retirement: “You can’t handle the truth!”

Think you deserve the truth? Do you really want to know what’s lurking behind the curtain of those fairy tale walks on the beach, apparent joy in watching your grand kids graduate from college, or what you may endure before your family reads your recently published memoirs in front of the fireplace?

Seven hard realities that come with retirement:

1) You can never save enough money to retire happily ever after because money and happiness have nothing to do with each other.

2) After you retire, the only guarantee is that you will die.

3) Problems don’t go away in retirement; they may even get bigger because retirees have more time and fewer distractions to keep them at bay.

4) You may end up living longer than generations past, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you will live healthier longer. Natural aging may:

Weaken your immune system

Diminish your sense of taste or smell

Make your heart muscle less efficient

Shrink your bones in size and density

Cause frequent constipation

Diminish bladder control

Increase frequency of urination

Impair your memory

Slow your reaction time

Reduce your ability to produce tears, making you more sensitive to glare

Cause dry mouth and to pull your gums back from your teeth

Make you susceptible to bruises and wrinkles

Make it more difficult to maintain a healthy weight

Alter your sexual needs, patterns and performance.

5) Your family and friends may move away, or choose to spend less time with you.

7) On the day you finally retire, you lose the very identity you spent years creating in the workplace.

Talk about a retirement buzz kill right! Sort of makes you want to have a few drinks or take an anti-depressant doesn’t it?

It may seem harsh or over stated but I’ve seen it. Take the ideal couple who finally sell their house and retire at the perfect time. They’re looking forward to playing golf together and hosting family and friends every holiday. Then, less than a year into their “golden years,” the wife has a stroke and everything changes. Plans and dreams are dashed and all they hoped to do together starts slipping through their hands.

Or take the career woman who, sadly, dies within the first year of her retirement; or the guy whose only response to losing his work identity is to share his extreme political views in a belligerent voice after his nightly six-pack of beer. Let me tell you: retirement isn’t all peaches and cream. It’s life … where both good and bad things happen, which brings me to my point.

Don’t use the concept of retirement to put off doing things that make you who you are and that are important to you. You can’t predict what will come once you’re retired. Too many people make retirement plans that assume there’s going to be lots of time. Therefore, don’t forsake major opportunities to spend time with family and friends, traveling, learning new skills, exercising, or finding and following you passion because you may discover that, for one reason or another, you can’t do it in retirement.

So stop worrying about whether you’ll run out of money before you die, or won’t be able to retire until your 80. Get a handle on the truth about planning and be sure to include some plans for making the most of today instead of worrying aimlessly about the future.